World first for Shoreditch cocktail bar

Published: 05 August, 2011

The team at Victorian-inspired bar The Worship Street Whistling Shop in Shoreditch have created what they claim is "the world's first multi sensory cocktail experience".

Taking place in the bar's Cocktail Emporium, it sets out to change the way consumers perceive mixed drinks and uses technology rarely seen in a culinary context, such as video mapping, adaptive lighting and aromas, purpose developed by perfumists.

Themed experiences will take place on a quarterly basis, with the first event, The History of Rum, kicking off on August 15 and running through to November.

A session will last two hours and take guests, in groups of five to eight, through six key drinks in rum's history. An expert drinks historian will map out rum's origins in colonial America right up to present day trends and each drink will be matched with moving images, music, sound effects, aromas and food.

Bar manager Ryan Chetiyawardana said: "We will be fusing links between drinking, history and multi sensory perception, something that hasn't been done before by any other bar in the world."

Tristan Stephenson, co-owner of Fluid Movement, added: "This is a great opportunity for guests to enjoy an exclusive selection of historically accurate food and drink in an evolving environment that aims to recreate the eras in which the drinks were first conceived."

The Worship Street Whistling Shop is twenty-first century update of the Victorian gin palace concept originally found in London in the 1820's. The bar features a lab where the team research new drinks and distil their own scents and flavours.